English Summary

Western CESEE countries in the ascendant

The outlook for GDP growth in the Central, East and Southeast Europe (CESEE) region remains divergent: we expect a gradual acceleration of GDP growth for most of the EU’s new Member States (NMS) starting this year. For 2015 growth is expected to increase to 3% on average, by 0.2 pp more as compared to last year. The recovery comes a year earlier than expected mainly based on favourable developments in the euro area. In the Western Balkans growth prospects will also improve over the whole forecast period 2015-2017, though slightly less dynamically. Growth performance in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine in 2015, however, will be dismal and partly worse than expected; the medium-term outlook for these countries is also fairly uncertain with considerable downside risks. Overall though, we should expect stronger CESEE growth to act as a demand stimulus for the Austrian economy. The NMS in particular are of increasing importance for Austria.